#LIT16! Camonghne Felix, Danté Stewart, David Dennis, Jr., M Shelly Conner | Virtual

This event will be hosted on Zoom. You’ll receive the link to the Zoom meeting the day of the event via email. Free registration/ticket sales will end at 6:30pm ET on 1/19. Please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com if you miss this cut-off and need a ticket. For questions, check out our FAQ for events here.

About the writers’ work:

“Dyscalculia took my breath, grabbed my heart, and made me see. It brought me back to every heartbreak I’ve ever endured, and I marveled at Camonghne Felix’s deep knowing and even deeper articulation of the pain of loss, the loss of self, the loss of love, and the pathway back to healing and something like wholeness. This book is a gift and a miracle, and Felix’s pen and heart are full of the most beautiful fire.” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“Only once in a lifetime do we come across a writer like Danté Stewart, so young and yet so masterful with the pen. This work is a thing to make dungeons shake and hearts thunder.” —Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times bestselling author of The Prophets

“The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space to which I honestly never thought a book could take us. This is literally the Movement that made us and both Davids love us whole here with a creation that is as ingenious as it is soulfully sincere. Stunning.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

“everyman is a vivid and winding tale of self-discovery that I was quite happy to trail along after. With a cast of fascinating characters, each one lovingly drawn, Conner’s debut is captivating, smart, and beautifully written.” —Sharon Lynn Fisher, award-winning author of The Absinthe Earl

About the writers:

Camonghne Felix, poet and essayist, is the author of Build Yourself a Boat, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry, shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award, and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Academy of American Poets, Freeman’s, Harvard Review, LitHub, The New Yorker, PEN America, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essays have been featured in Vanity Fair, New York, Teen Vogue, and other places. She is a contributing writer at The Cut.

Danté Stewart is a speaker and a writer whose work in the areas of race, religion, and politics has been featured on CNN and in The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Comment, and elsewhere. He received the Georgia Author of the Year Award for his memoir, Shoutin’ in the Fire. He received his BA in sociology from Clemson University and is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

David Dennis, Jr. is a senior writer at The Undefeated. His work has been featured in Atlanta Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Huffington Post, among other publications. Dennis is the recipient of the 2021 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, is a National Association of Black Journalist Salute to Excellence award winner, and was named one of The Root’s 100 Most Influential African Americans of 2020. He lives in Georgia with his wife and two children and is a graduate of Davidson College.

M Shelly Conner received her PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. A multigenre writer, she is the creator of the Quare Life web series and has published essays on dapperqueer aesthetics, Black womanhood, self-sustainable living, and their intersections in various publications. Conner is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and lives in Arkansas with her wife and their dog, Whiskey.